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February 21st is officially recognized by UNESCO as International Mother Language Day. I didn’t know about this day until 2011, when a couple of international students from Bangladesh introduced me to the origin of the movement to protect Bengali—(they’re the first two students in the video that we put together that year in the International Centre at the University of Alberta).

As a language learner, this day always reminds me of a quote from the Caribbean Francophone poet Édouard Glissant, which essentially says “I speak to you in your tongue, but I understand you in my language”. On that note, I really appreciated the 2017 message from UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, recognizing the occasion:

“We are beings of language. Cultures, ideas, feelings and even aspirations for a better world come to us first and foremost in a specific language, with specific words. These languages convey values and visions of the world that enrich humanity. Giving value to these languages opens up the range of possible futures, and strengthens the energy needed to achieve them. On the occasion of this Day, I launch an appeal for the potential of multilingual education to be acknowledged everywhere, in education and administrative systems, in cultural expressions and the media, cyberspace and trade. The better we understand how to value languages, the more tools we will have to build a future of dignity for all.”

Someone gave me a free (swag) water bottle the other day–looking at the picture on the box, I could see that the design was one that seems to be pretty popular these days. With a somewhat subdued design that wasn’t dominated by a corporate logo splashed everywhere (hidden here), it seemed like a keeper. Before throwing out the box, however, I thought it would be a good idea to check if I was going to be able to wash my water bottle in the dishwasher.

That’s when it happened– I picked up the box and….found myself looking at the French version of the description and instructions. The language learning mind games had begun.

As someone who likes to speak French sometimes (still a rusty B2), I was essentially faced with a question: read the French, or take the easy route and flip over to the English?

Excel in French?

A while back, I wondered if it would be hard to track down similar Excel videos in other languages. As it is with most things these days, all I needed to do was turn to Google and ask “comment utiliser index match excel youtube“. Once a youtube video that was remotely close to what I was looking for opened up, I was set— Youtube’s “suggested videos” eventually guided me (as expected) to videos with a decent number of views. Without trying very hard, I found a short video introducing the =VLOOKUP function, which is evidently called the RECHERCHEV function French– voila!

Other hobbies?

If learning Excel in another language isn’t your thing, what about guitar? In English, you can have James Taylor teach you how to play Fire and Rain, himself. If happen to enjoy the guitar and also want to learn Brazilian Portuguese, why not try learning how to sing and play a song? Or just sing along…. or just play along.. etc. etc.

I don’t know how to say “how to play guitar” in Portuguese, so I used Google Translate, and then used copy/paste to put the results, “como tocar guitarra,” into a google/youtube search. Once you start adding in the names of artists and songs that you like, you may find something. In my case, I ended up finding a high-quality guitar lesson for Caetano Veloso’s ‘Sozinho’. The video wasn’t done by Caetano Veloso himself, but this teacher quite cleverly incorporates great on-screen tabs as well as original audio from the song.

What if the language level is over your head?

At this point, I don’t understand more than a few words of this video (i.e. I don’t speak Portuguese); however, looking at the guitar instruction, it’s pretty clear that it’s a good video (over 80,000 views at this point). If I stuck with this video long enough to pick up the song on guitar, I’m confident that at least a few of the phrases from the teacher would stay with me.

Don’t torture yourself

If you don’t feel like learning the whole song, remember you might just want to try learning the chorus before moving on to another song. I don’t think I would ever encourage people to treat these kinds of videos as something to memorize; however, if you’re not using your target language as a tool for learning something new every once in awhile, then you may find that this kind of exercise is an interesting change of pace.

What makes a few of these difficult (I’m sure there are better examples), is the cultural context in which they rest. Added to that, the consequences of ‘getting it wrong’ tend to rattle your confidence and, over time, it get’s harder and harder to step out of your comfort zone.

Which part is ‘hardest’ will be different for everyone; however, in terms of being able to think on your feet in a professional context, I think the fourth one is especially valuable— and probably the one over which you have the most control (or at least practice).

So many arguments about ‘the best way to go’ for language learners at different levels…

The tricky part, of course, is that what works for one person might be totally off-base for you.

Ultimately, we can only really judge ‘what works’ for ourselves—if you find yourself arguing, it’s probably a sign that you should try something different…… conversely, what works for you may not work so well for someone else….. “learn and let learn” I guess.

The designers of most language tests (DELF, JLPT, HSK, etc.) are trying harder and harder to make test scores reflect real world communicative ability; are you aiming beyond standard language tests (that really only mark the beginning of the next stage of learning)?

I don’t count myself as a hyperpolyglot(!), but I can definitely agree that the key to successful language learning is simply finding a way to enjoy the process. Judging from the book review in The Economist, this seems to be part of the message of Michael Erard’s new book, Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners.

from the review: “Hyperpolyglots may begin with talent, but they aren’t geniuses. They simply enjoy tasks that are drudgery to normal people. The talent and enjoyment drive a virtuous cycle that pushes them to feats others simply shake their heads at, admiration mixed with no small amount of incomprehension.”

If you’re an active language learner, are you on an upward spiral, or are you stuck in the language-learning doldrums? What kinds of things do you enjoy doing that other people might think of as ‘drudgery’?

With a strip of rainbow-coloured carpet weaving a path up the stairs and onto the wall around the whole store, it’s not hard to understand why any kid would love to spend a few hours hanging out in a bookstore like the Poplar Kid’s Republic Bookstore in Beijing (蒲蒲兰绘本馆). Located right next to a cafe I used to visit in the Jianwai SOHO area, it had lots of great origami paper and Japanese (as well as Chinese and Korean) books. I picked up some books for my son the last time I was in Beijing but, if anyone knows of a similar kind of international children’s bookstore in Canada *please* let me know!

Tracing Practice

One book that I picked up from that shop is called (えんぴつで書いて読む日本の童話), which you might translate as “Penciling your way through Japanese children’s stories”. The concept of the book is remarkably simple: famous pieces of children’s literature printed in an large font (I’d guess 36pt?), the font colour is probably about 35% grey so, as kids read it aloud, they trace over each character with their pencil. One can assume that their parents would also read the story to them at the same time—neat way to experience a story, eh?

The bulk of my language ‘study’ these days is listening to podcasts and other audio materials during my commute to and from work. That’s pretty much been my pattern for the last couple of years– it works for me, but I’ve had a nagging feeling that I could/should be doing more work on reading and writing.

On my last HSK test, my suspicions were concerned— my listening section score was much much higher than the writing score. Thinking about what I could do that wouldn’t take up tons of time (having a three year-old in the house means different priorities!), I hatched an idea.

I remembered that, awhile back, my mother had given us a couple of old digital photo frames– you know, the ones you can plug in and they will cycle through any images that you have on a USB key? They weren’t the latest and greatest crystal-clear version of the technology, “but they were on clearance, and maybe we could use them to entertain [her grandson]?” Because I’m still trying to keep him away from electrical cords, I didn’t really put the frames to use until a few weeks ago when the idea struck me to put one of them on my desk at work and make jpg flashcards of Chinese characters/phrases that I wanted to better remember.

The concept is pretty simple— use a free graphics editor like Paintbrush to type up two versions of an image, one with just the Chinese characters and the other with any pinyin or English comments that I wanted to add. Naming them with sequential filenames ensures that they come up in order on the picture frame on my desk. It’s not like I stare at it for hours, but every once in a while, a word will catch my eye and I’ll get reminded again about the strokes that make up that particular character.

When I’m reading something that contains an expression that seems worth remembering, I quickly open up paintbrush and make a white background flashcard. Dumping it into a folder, I’m free to update my USB key whenever the inspiration hits.

When it comes to using flashcards, there are lots of folks talking about spaced repetition— sites like BYKI and Anki are good places to start if you want to give it a try. I like the concept, but my ‘passive’ picture-frame cards are much more my speed these days. This way I can keep some ‘word souvenirs’ from things I read and the review process weaves its way into my day.